I’ve made a couple of posts earlier in this blog, emphasising that the term “blogging” is perceived in very different ways by different people. The blogging platform is just a tool. How you use a tool depends on how creative you can be! Today I share 10 very practical ways in which people have gotten to use blogs!

1. Personal Weblog

That’s the original use of blogs. Start a blog in 5 minutes, and then start venting all your frustrations, pouring your complaints about your next door neighbour, the weather, start scolding your boss.

2. Professional Interest Blog

If you have a particular interest in a certain area, like for example, trekking or photography or skiing, consider starting a Professional Interest Blog where you log your daily thoughts about the area of interest. Soon, what you will find is a repository of knowledge which can be so valuable to share with people of the same interests. You might even want to take it further to recommend products to take some load off your pockets.

3. Website for Your Company

Since blogs have been made so easy to set up and administer – some companies actually use blogs as their company websites! Instead of creating static HTML pages, consider just creating one post for a presupposed “page”. Then, create a menu bar in your blog template to link to the permalink.

Of course, in WordPress, you can always use the “page” feature. 🙂

4. Online Resume

Blogs can be one of the best online resumes ever. Just imagine how cool 8) it would be if your boss asks you for your resume and then you say “Well, check out my blog at http://yada yada yada. That’s where I log all my professional thoughts and experience”.

By the way, that’s a great way to test if your boss is “online” or “offline”! If he answers “What’s a blog?”, do direct him my way, and I may have another customer. Sorry, no affiliate URLs for you yet, but dinner is on me. 🙂

5. Publish A Newsletter

Blogs are a great way to publish newsletters, may it be for your club or company or not-for-profit organisation. Why settle to pay dollars a piece for dull CMYK colors on paper when you can afford to put interactivity and animated graphics delivered instantly online… for almost FREE?

6. A Communication Platform for Companies

That the key for corporate blogs. Its the CEO’s ultimate tool to get in touch with customers direct, and find out what they want, when they want it and how they want it. Remember to enable commenting on your blog.

7. A Brainless Instant Publishing Site to Make Money

Well, at least, this is how I interpret it when I read some of the money making programs online that say you can “make money with blogs on autopilot”. You get your articles from an article repository and then you publish it on your blog. With the use of some very powerful (and scary, if put in the wrong hands) software, you could even do this without a single Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

If you are doing this, by the way, I’d recommend you add some of your own thoughts, opinions, comments and critique. That will help you quite a lot in making yourself look a little more brainy. 🙂 Your thoughts could also spark some conversation, which will help in your blog.

8. Project Development and Status Announcements

Who says blogs need to be updated frequently? Update these blogs (just like the WordPress development blog) when you have very important things to say to your customers, so that they take each message seriously.

9. Collaboration Project Logs

Working on group projects? Consider using a blog as your “project homepage”. Give access to every group member to post, and announce the blog address. You might even want to use an RSS to Email service to make sure every message gets delivered to every group member.

At the end of the project, that blog will again become a wonderful manual for future reference, or, at least a great piece to show your project supervisor how much effort and pain you guys went through to get your stuff done. Prepare your pitch to get a pay raise too

10. A Chatroom Creator

Well, there are not many blogs like this out there who can do it, but with an authentic voice and interest to communicate, I’d just say its possible. When you start to find your regular posts having over 20 comments, you know you are almost there! I, for one, am frantically trying to be able to achieve such a standard on this blog.

So please stay to chat today! 🙂 What other ways can you use a blog?